There is no monopoly on Croatian electricity market. RWE Energija and Slovenian GEN-I provides electricity to households in Croatian market, next to Croatian Electric Power Utility. High electricity bills have disturbed Croatians so far, but significantly lower accounts can be expected in the future.
“Independently from competition, we will change our way of working and we will offer different tariffs to different consumers. We asked for lower electricity price”, President of HEP Administration, Tomislav Seric said.
HEP asked for electricity price decrease by 10% because of increased amount of rain during last year. No matter on competition arrival, they would do the same- they say.
“I can say that completely same things would happen even if there were no competition”, Seric thinks.
However, competition is working really hard and houses are slowly turning toward new operators. According to HEP’s data, 628 houses have left them, but numbers they have in Germany are significantly bigger.
“We had 4 thousand of signed contracts this morning. According to that, there will be 14 days of waiting if buyer changes his mind but considering that it is a little number of remissions, we can talk about this number and it has surprised us pleasantly”, Zoran Milisa, President of RWE Administration said.
Reaction of the market pleasantly surprised Slovenian Gen-I, too.
“We have had more than 6 thousands of applications for transfer in our network. This is above the plans because it is the beginning phase of the market development”, Robert Golob, President of Gen-I Zagreb, said.
Market is developing and citizens have a possibility of choice for the first time.
German RWE offers three types of packages. They guarantee annual saving of one average monthly rate i.e. around 40 EUR.
Slovenian Gen-I hasn’t defined final prices yet. It will do it after price decrease is approved to HEP and they will do that after HEP approves price decrease and they estimate bills to 65 to 130 on annual basis.
Slovenian company are moving step forward and announces long-term fixing of prices.
“It is possible to fix current price at the moment. We already know if someone wants it, we can offer a price for the next five years. Future may change, but there is no need for it at this very moment”, Golob says.
However, HEP is not afraid of competition.
“I think it is good for HEP because we will be forced to make HEP imagined it is not necessary. But people will understand that HEP needs to think about profit and how to optimize a profit”, Seric says.
Competition will try to take them a part of a profit away. Slovenian Gen-I will intend to take over 17% and German RWE 10% of a market.
“10% are real numbers. If we’ll make them right away will depend on market, but our goal is to be the second player at the market”, Milisa says.
The biggest winners suppose to be final consumers that should get lower electricity price with market liberalization.
Source;Serbia Energy See desk
